updated 02:50 pm EDT, Mon April 4, 2011

Sony faces impact from Anonymous on PSN, PS3

Anonymous has quickly acted on threats to attack Sony's network for its lawsuit against PS3 jailbreaking by hitting out at the company's websites. Along with reports of European and North American PlayStation pages being hit, the company said at mid-day that PSN service was randomly going offline due to "sporadic maintenance." Website access was up as of Monday afternoon, but PSN has been less stable.

The claims to maintenance are likely attempts to shore up the exploits being used to make denial of service attacks. They may alternately be simply attempts to avoid acknowledging that Anonymous was the cause. Sony has regularly used euphemisms and has claimed that firmware updates clamping down on support for other operating systems were for security when they were actually to discourage perceived piracy threats.

Both supporters of George Hotz, the target of the lawsuit, and of Anonymous have objected not just to the idea of the lawsuit but Sony's approach. It has not only threatened legal action against anyone posting the jailbreak but has snooped IP addresses and even YouTube account details for thousands of people, even for people simply curious and not actually interested in the hacks. They have also echoed the view of a countering lawsuit by noting that Sony pulled a bait-and-switch by breaking promises and removing the Other OS feature for people who had already paid for a console years earlier.

Sony has also made unusual claims that Hotz was fleeing the country when he was taking a spring vacation. More under dispute has been claims that Hotz created a PSN account in secret; it believed he lied about not having an account and used anecdotal evidence as proof. Hotz has said that a system attached to an account was a neighbor's but hasn't had definitive proof.